Battling Addiction

By Rahul Nag

If you stop drinking for any length of time, your body is going through some changes, both physically and emotionally. Since alcohol is a powerfully addictive drug that is toxic, your body had to make some physical changes to keep you from being poisoned. Your body’s chemistry, especially that of your liver, had to change to keep you alive while you were drinking. However, once your body chemistry changed to accommodate the presence of alcohol, it cannot be un-changed. This is why you are experiencing physical cravings for alcohol; your body wants it back! These cravings are most intense in the first six months of abstinence from alcohol. Thus, this is when most relapses occur. Here’s how you can beat alcohol cravings today, right now:

Cravings occur on a Bell curve: they start out mild, grow in intensity until they peak, and then gradually they return to the “baseline” of no cravings. When you feel craving begin, now you know what’s going to happen - you’re ahead of the game right there! As your craving peaks in about 30 minutes, do something else. Anything; exercise, go to your recovery group’s web site and talk through your craving, call a friend, read your email, go to a movie, read a book, watch TV, just get your mind onto something else. The craving will begin to recede slowly, and soon it will be gone altogether. This process takes about an hour. Keep telling yourself “I won’t give in. This is going to pass.” And it will! Your self-confidence will be raised significantly as you enjoy this success.

More →

Share This

By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

In my experience as a counselor for 40 years, I have found that love addiction and approval addiction are far more prevalent than any other substance or process addictions. We live in a love-addicted, approval-addicted society.

What does it mean to be love/approval addicted? Below is a checklist for you to see if you are addicted to love and/or approval. Believing any of these may indicate love or approval addiction.

More →

Share This

By Morgan Hamilton

Alcohol and drug treatment has evolved quite a bit of past few decades. The first forms of alcohol and drug treatment were actually quite primitive compared to what’s available today. In the dark ages it was thought that addictions were caused by demonic possession, which had many different prescribed ‘cures’ ranging from blood letting to being burned at the stake. In the 19th and early 20th century, alcohol and drug treatment had made some strides towards improvements as opposed to when addictions were then considered forms of insanity and the treatments of choice involved straight jackets, padded rooms, and electric shocks. Could you imagine? You have to wonder what they were thinking?

What we consider today as modern alcohol and drug treatment didn’t really start until the second half of the 20th century. This was no doubt one of the well-known and often repeated ’12 step’ program designed by Alcoholics Anonymous. Doctors and practitioners slowly came to realize that effective alcohol and drug treatment was in fact a possibility. Some of the first forms of alcohol and drug treatment centers formed in this time were not much more than centers where the 12 step program could be taught. The treatments were actually more psychological than anything else.

More →

Share This

By Gary Paul Evans

It is hard to pinpoint exactly how much you are throwing away on marijuana unless you take the time to sit down and do a bit of quick math. How often do you buy weed, and in what quantity? Better yet, what else could you be spending that money on?

When it comes to the average amount of money that people spend feeding their marijuana addictions, accurate statistics are hard to come by. After all, people aren’t exactly forthcoming about how much they spend on an activity that is probably illegal in their country. For the purpose of this exercise, let’s assume that you spend an average of $35 per week on marijuana.

More →

Share This

Greetings and Salutations ..

The nameservers have kicked in and this blog appears to be ready for new posts. I am in the final stages of testing the database, the permissions, etc etc etc.

We’re almost there .. and back to normal!

Please take a look around, and see if you notice anything different. I would appreciate your comments …

More →

Share This

NOTICE:

Effective June 4-8th week there will be no new postings. You might have already seen a slowdown in this blog since the last week of May 2007 - it is all related. I am in the process of moving all my accounts to a new host provider this week (MidPhase) and there may be times during this switchover that this site may not be accessible. I assure you that this will be temporary, and I will take all the efforts to make this transition go as smooth as possible. I’m giving myself the entire week for this move and the switchover basically, because I’ve got a lot of blogs to be moved! I apologize for any inconveniences in advance, and hope you please bear with me during this time.

In the meantime, I have decided to just combine my monthly “Sponsorship Appreciation” posts with this message to keep you informed.

More →

Share This